The Ground She Walks Upon (32 page)

"We find noblemen quite indigestible."

"A pity." He watched her through heavy-lidded eyes. "I always fancied being eaten by a witch."

An odd excitement trilled in her belly. His naughtiness never failed to disconcert her.

"Come, sit by the fire with me." He held out his hand.

Slowly she rose, wrapping the cloak around her nudity. Her hair was in knots; her legs wobbly and unsure. It was a relief to feel his hands on her hips, sliding her between his legs near to the fire.

They stared into the flames, a restless silence between them.

Finally, he lifted the hair at her nape and kissed the soft jet curls at her hairline. "You smell... mmmm... how to describe it. Mystic. Like crushed orchids."

"What is an orchid?"

" 'Tis a flower. From the darkest jungle. They're very fragile. I've come across their fragrance many a time in the queen's botanical gardens at Windsor."

"You mean—the actual queen?" Her heart sped at the. thought. She couldn't imagine being in the presence of the queen. The pomp and circumstance was just too awe-inspiring.

"I've been to Windsor many a time. Albert likes a good hunt as much as any man."

She shut her eyes, hating the jolt of despair that shot through her. He consorted with the queen and her royal prince, while she scratched out her miserable fairy tales and dreamed of one day clerking in Dublin. The gulf between herself and Trevallyan was too large to bridge. They were worlds apart, and his talk of Windsor had brought the reality right to her doorstep.

"Why so quiet?" he whispered, nibbling on her ear.

"Am I?" she asked distantly.

"Yes." There was a playfulness in his tone. "Does my talk of the queen annoy your rebel Irish nature?"

"No..." She stiffened.

He ceased kissing her.

"What is it?" he whispered against her neck.

Her mouth grew dry as she forced out the words. "You— you say you want my love..."

"Yes?"

"... and yet, you've never spoken about your love."

His hands tightened on her shoulders. There was a long, painful silence. "Once, long ago when I was just a lad, I thought I gave my love to Helen, my wife."

"Did you?" The words were so low as to be inaudible.

"She cuckolded me. She led me down a fool's path." His voice was harsh and yet dispassionate, as if he were speaking of wounds now healed. "I now realize what I felt was never love. It was rebellion, a need to ease my loneliness."

"And—how—do you feel about me?" She braced herself for the answer.

"I
never
wanted her like I want you."

"And the others?" she gasped, thinking of his chorus of fiancees.

"I desired a wife and children. You must understand. You were just a child, Ravenna. With every year, with every woman I knew I could not lie to, I saw my dreams slip through my hands."

"And so... you love me?"

His struggle was almost palpable. She could feel it in the grip of his hands, in the wooden manner in which he held himself. "I don't know," he finally confessed. "I see now I know nothing about it. I've never felt it before." He cupped her chin and turned her head so that she would be forced to look at him. She did, with eyes glittering with tears. "I only know that I want you. Desperately. So desperately that my need for you eclipses everything else in my life. I want you so much it frightens me. I fear it may destroy me, and I cannot stop it."

Possession. It ran through his veins like blood. She would not destroy him. He would destroy himself.

"I've told you before," her voice was a choked whisper, "I don't want to be owned. I'm already too indebted to you." She looked away, hopelessness dulling the sparkle in her eyes. "I should have run from you back at the castle. Now I'll owe you for finding my father."

"You owe me for nothing. I've given you these things, free and clear. When Grania told me about your need for silverware at that infernal school of yours, did I send it with a bill? I did not."

She looked at him, grim-faced, reminded how he'd even provided the silverware and had her initial engraved on each piece. His manipulations had been deep; they knew no boundaries at all.

"I'll pay you for the silver promptly when we return to Lir," she told him.

He ran his hand down his face, then rubbed his lightly bearded jaw in frustration. "I don't want the money. Don't you see? I only want to make you happy. Whatever you want, I'll get for you. You want those silly tales of yours published—well, I've a friend in Dublin who publishes books. He'll publish them for you. I will do all that, to make you happy."

She recoiled as if he'd burned her. He didn't understand anything that she wanted. "You can't do that. I shall publish on my own, or give up the endeavor. I won't humiliate myself by using your powers to see my words in print."

"Why are you so pigheaded? You won't get them published any other way."

"I'll do it by my talent, or I won't do it at all."

He heaved a sigh and studied her as if she were some sort of alien creature. "Fine. Do it the hard way. Accept your failure. I don't care. As long as you stay away from Malachi and his ilk, and behave like a lady, then you may do as you please."

" 'Behave like a lady.' And how may I do that when you've seen to it twice that I'm no lady at all?" She couldn't cloak the venom in her tongue. The truth was too raw.

His anger frightened her. He shook her until her teeth rattled. "Don't you ever say such words to me again. What's between us is good and fine. Don't ever imply otherwise."

She almost wept her impassioned rebuttal. "Grania told me about pleasures of the flesh when I asked about my mother. She never put constraints upon me. She made me believe the union between a man and woman was beautiful and creative, and because I was not Catholic, and raised outside of society, I believed her." She wiped the tears spilling down her cheeks. "But then a man sent me to an English school. There they drilled into me exactly the kind of woman my mother had been. You say I'm to be a lady. Well, the headmistress of Weymouth-Hampstead would have another word for me—"

"Bother that! They were not responsible for molding you. I saw to that. Your upbringing was, and is, mine to control, and I tell you, the headmistress of that bloody English gaol I sent you to was wrong in this regard. The world is made of many rules. You play by all of them and you are miserable."

"You play by none of them... and you die alone." She stared at him. She watched the anger pass across his features.

"I flaunted the
geis
and found nothing but misfortune. Now I'm willing to embrace it, but it's not working. Both paths seemed doomed. So which do I take? Which do I take?" He spoke the question like a monk's chant.

"You follow your heart."

"Yes."

She looked up at him and for one brief second, she saw a want on his face that she had seen in no man. The emotion was loneliness and despair combined, further tortured by an acute intelligence that couldn't be comforted by delusions. The emotion was raw, and so vivid that she felt it pass through her very soul like a wind off the Irish Sea.

But quickly, artfully, he shuttered it away behind the terrible facade of the brooding Lord Niall Trevallyan, and it vanished like a wraith, leaving her to wonder if it was not something she had imagined.

Yet it had been real. For if it hadn't been real, then she would be able to erase the bittersweet ache it had left in her heart.

"I won't let you go, Ravenna," he said softly.

She hardened her heart, forcing herself to fight when all she wanted was to surrender. "You can't keep me if I don't love you."

He held her against his chest, his eyes alive with the reflection of the flames of the fire.

"Watch me," he whispered ominously. "Just watch me."

D
awn was
still a gray ghost on the horizon when Ravenna woke within Niall's embrace. The straw was warm where they lay beneath her cloak; it was difficult to think of leaving, but she wanted to be gone. She knew she must leave him while she still had the strength of will to do it. Now, just paces from Cinaeth Castle and the truth about her father, she knew she must break free and do this by herself or suffer the consequences of Trevallyan's all-consuming manipulations.

She looked down at Trevallyan. He slept well. She hated to even think of the reasons why. The soreness between her thighs spoke eloquently of the activity the night before. Furious with him, she had meant to sleep alone, wrapped in the false security of the purple wool and velvet cloak, but then he had lain down next to her. She tried to remain stiff and unapproachable, but he ignored her mood, and pulled her within his arms. He held her so close, she swore she could feel the strong beat of his heart, and, not wanting to, she had nevertheless turned to him.

He kissed her. His hand familiarly cupped her breast. She had hated herself then, as she did now, because instead of pushing him away, she had kissed him. He took her hard and swiftly, as if binding her soul to his, and she had let him, only because her plans for today had solidified. She was going to leave him, even though she thought she might be in love with him after all.

Pulling on her dress, contorting herself to reach the hooks at the back, she stepped away from the pile of straw that had been their bed. The sky overhead through the thatch was graying to the color of doves. It would be light soon. She had to find the road, and there were miles perhaps to walk to Cinaeth Castle. He would follow her there, she knew it, but at least she would have an hour or two alone with those who might have known her father. She would fight for that much. It wouldn't do to linger.

Silently, she swept the cloak over her cold shoulders. She looked at Niall one last time and wondered about when they would meet again. She knew it would be in anger, but she still hoped not. He had given her no choice. It was either begin to break away, or fall in love with him and entwine herself. He would force more and more dependence on him until she would be obligated forever. And he was too powerful and vindictive a man to become indebted to. She would be nothing but a slave to him, an Irish peasant to do his bidding because he had shown charity to her. Because he had lusted after her. She was not his possession. She was no man's possession. She would no longer accept his good works, including the one he attempted now in leading her to her father's ancestral home.

She tore her gaze from his sleeping, half-nude form that was partially hidden in the mounds of straw. The urge to kiss him farewell was strong, but she swallowed it like bile. If she kissed him, he might awaken. He might kiss her back, and then she'd fall again beneath his warlock's spell and take the wanton pleasures he offered.

Cinaeth Castle was a breathtaking sight to
a girl who had been born in an Irish hovel. Ravenna climbed the small rise in the road, squinting in the early afternoon sun. She didn't need to look hard. In the distant forests, it spired up from the treetops like a sentinel guarding the hills. Delicate, and relatively modern in comparison to the dark, brooding, millennium-old Trevallyan home, the sandstone castle was a princess's dream. It was the color of wheat, the turrets patinated to a fine copper-green. Ravenna felt she had stepped right into one of her faerie tales. It was all she could do to keep herself from running along the white-pebbled drive and throwing herself at the gilded front doors.

As she passed through the iron and gold gates mounted with English neoclassical gryphons, she wished fervently that she could make herself more presentable. Her hairpins had been lost in the straw, and her hair, though tied with a silk ribbon, hung loose down her back, mercifully covered by the wool cloak. There were nettles still woven in her hemline, and her silk dress, yesterday fresh and pretty, was now a rumpled, embarrassing rag.

Other worries assaulted her. How would she present herself? How would she ask about her father? She had tried to think of these things during the trip, but Trevallyan had presented so many distractions, she hadn't had time to properly think. Now she wished she had given it all more thought. As she walked to the French, gilt-encrusted doors, she remembered the old saying, "Fools rush in..."

"Who are you?"

Before she had even time to knock, the door opened, and a butler peered down at her, a man quite the opposite of Greeves. With his missing arm and Irish-English accent, Greeves was only too human. But this man, this cold, aristocratic paragon of pomposity, seemed in no way touched by human feeling. He looked down upon her as if she were the girl who emptied the chamber pots. One who now dared to enter the front of the castle as if she were a peeress.

"I've come to see..." Her words died on her lips. Who had she come to see, after all? She was certain the man who had been her father was dead. So who would tell her about him?

"Lord or Lady Cinaeth, please," she announced, hating the fact that the butler's stare made her want to cower.

"What is your concern?" The butler flicked his gaze to her wrinkled cloak and dusty hem, as if he were doubtful of her upbringing.

Bitterly, she couldn't in all good conscience deny what he thought. All she could do was fight. And fight she would.

"Show me to Lady Cinaeth or it'll be the worse for you." She despised the way her accent came out when she was angry. The last thing she wanted was to look hopelessly Irish to these people.

"The viscountess, Lady Cinaeth, is trimming the roses in the greenhouse. She cannot be disturbed."

Showing more cheek than she thought she possessed, she walked past him into a beautiful hall lined with windows and pastoral Watteau-inspired tapestries. She pointed her finger toward a door and said, with a haughtiness learned by example, "Take me to the morning room and bring me a cup of tea. I'll wait for your mistress there."

The butler stood mutely by the door. She turned her back so that he could remove her cloak.

A long moment passed while he obviously thought about the consequences should he turn her away. With a small feeling of triumph, she felt him reluctantly slip the cloak from her shoulders.

"Follow me, miss. I'll tell Lady Cinaeth you are here." He led her through an archway that hid a pair of glass French doors. Throwing them open, he ushered her into a small drawing room. Light poured in from a breathtaking twenty-foot window, framed in an astounding amount of plum-colored velvet.

"Your name, miss?" The butler watched her seat herself on a green and gold settee.

"Ravenna." She gave him her best witchy stare. If that wouldn't ward off his questions concerning her lack of a last name, nothing would.

"Thank you. Tea will be here shortly." He gave her a supercilious, dubious look, then bowed and left to fetch his mistress.

With a shaking hand, Ravenna gripped the serpentine arm of the settee. She had made it this far, but terror struck at her heart at the thought of broaching the subject of her father to Lady Cinaeth. She knew nothing about Lady Cinaeth. The woman could be her grandmother or her aunt, even her cousin. Certainly, it was possible that the old woman would kick her out the door the minute she brought up the subject of her father. Lady Cinaeth could be a dragon.

Ravenna gazed at the clouds painted on the gilt ceiling above, the view reminiscent of princesses and spellbound castles. An ogre couldn't be living in such exquisite surroundings. She suddenly grew more optimistic. Perhaps the woman would embrace her as a long-lost relative. The granddaughter she had never had. They would be friends, and Ravenna would finally have a family other than Grania.

"Who are you to take me from my roses?"

Ravenna's gaze riveted to the door. There stood a beautiful brunette woman, perhaps fifteen years older than herself, dressed in a gown of Paris green satin. On her intricately coifed head she wore a chip bonnet laced with lavender ribbon and sprigs of costly artificial violets. Her mouth, though nicely curved, formed a horizontal line as she peered at Ravenna disapprovingly.

"Who are you?" the viscountess asked, giving her a hazel-eyed, imperious stare.

"My name is Ravenna. I've come from County Lir." With cheeks pale with fear, Ravenna rose to her feet and faced the beauty.

"What is your business with me?" The viscountess impatiently slapped her palm with a pair of pruning shears. She wore cheese-colored goatskin gloves that covered her to the elbows, protecting her from thorns. When Ravenna didn't answer, she threw the shears and gloves onto a Louis XVI commode and stepped into the room.

"Are you a Gypsy? Hebblethwaite, my butler, thinks you are. He thinks you mean to rob us." With distaste, Lady Cinaeth took in her loosely bound hair and her soiled hemline.

Helplessly, Ravenna could do nothing but whisper, "I'm not a Gypsy," while the woman condemned her with her stare. She couldn't even blame Lady Cinaeth for her derogatory thoughts. A night spent in a barn had made her look less than presentable, and Ravenna knew she'd always looked a bit wild, a trait Weymouth-Hampstead had valiantly tried to whip out of her. Looking at herself through the eyes of the titled beauty before her, she almost wanted to die. Too late, she could finally understand the merits of Weymouth-Hampstead's teachings.

"So what is your business?" Lady Cinaeth raised her hand when Ravenna made to speak. Continuing, she said, "I'll have you know right now if you try to sell me charms or tell my fortune, I'll have you arrested. We don't countenance Gypsies here. The Irish are bad enough, little potato-eating drudges...."

The viscountess lowered her hand and waited for the expected denials.

Ravenna remained silent, her stare fixed on Lady Cinaeth's hand. Not a scratch marred its creamy length. Each nail was buffed to pink perfection. It was clean and soft. A lady's hand.

Then Ravenna thought of Grania's hands. Her grandmother's hands had always seemed ancient and work-worn, wrinkled and gnarled with disease. But they had always touched her with gentleness and love. They were never unkind. As these hands could surely be unkind.

"I'm on a quest to find my father," Ravenna said, her anger and pride beginning to surface. She was no potato-eating drudge, and if some of the Irish could be described that way, it was only because they were made poor by the English dogs that had raped them of their wealth.

"Why would I know your father?" The viscountess looked truly irritated.

"I have reason to believe he hailed from Cinaeth Castle. I know he was a nobleman...." Ravenna had difficulty finishing. The journey north to Antrim seemed so pointless now. This Lady Cinaeth with her beautiful, cold, hard face was never going to help her. She had come far, and at great cost, for nothing. Clinging to one last hope, Ravenna stared deep into the desert of the woman's eyes and sought compassion.

She found no oasis.

Lady Cinaeth's beautiful mouth quirked in disdain. "If your father was a nobleman, surely you would know who he was? I do believe propriety dictates one recognize one's legitimate children."

Ravenna felt each word like a knife slicing through her heart. She knew she was a bastard, but hearing the implication from this wealthy, privileged beauty—a woman who was perhaps even one of her own blood relations—cut her to the bone. With a dark, wounded gaze, she whispered, "He loved my mother. I know that. I
know
it."

"Then he ought to have married her."

"Lady Cinaeth, are you his sister? My aunt?"

Ridiculing laughter echoed along the bank of windows. "Don't be ridiculous. Me, an aunt to you? If the previous Lord Cinaeth spawned a bastard daughter before he died, 'tis my husband's concern. He was his brother, not mine."

"And your husband is Lord Cinaeth? My father's younger brother?" Ravenna thirsted for the truth. She ached to know anything. Even if it hurt her. Even if it was misery.

"My husband is Lord Cinaeth, indeed. Now," she raised an artful eyebrow and glanced at the door, "be off with you. I haven't the time to talk with misbegotten Gypsies."

"Please," Ravenna begged, her eyes filling with tears of rage and hopelessness. "I must just know his name. Just tell me my father's name. What was the name of Lord Cinaeth's brother?"

"Don't be ridiculous. I'll tell you nothing. Either you leave at once or I'll have Hebblethwaite throw you out." Lady Cinaeth calmly took the garden gloves and the shears from the marquetried top of the commode.

"Please. I've come very far—"

"Get out. And pray my husband doesn't find out about this. Why, he would probably put you in gaol for your presumptions."

"I will go to gaol then," Ravenna gasped, desperation pounding through her veins like blood. "Just tell me his name. Give me that much."

"Oh, you Irish are all alike. We give you a little charity and soon you expect to have our homes and land, too."

"Just tell me his name," Ravenna pleaded, fighting the tears that sprang to her eyes. Despair threatened to engulf her like floodwaters. She had come so far. Her hopes had been so high. Now her despair was crashing down on her like a wave she had no power to withstand.